Getting into the swing of the online shopping experience right about now? It seems that you have to simply because for the past two months almost every “non-essential” retail outlet has been closed down due to the coronavirus. So like it or not, your computer/tablet/phone is your shopping outlet. But, pandemic or not, don’t be too surprised if online shopping will be how you will shop…forever!

A Little Retail History

I’m going to skip past Org and Thor exchanging animal furs for food and go right up to the world of America in the 1800’s to save a little time here.

As a former boss of mine once said to me (and I have regretfully repeated over the years), “Father’s Day is the most important day of the year”…not! Let’s get real here, your mom was, has been, and still is the very most important person ever. I’m not here to list all the reasons why and that is because you already know that without her, you just wouldn’t exist, so case closed. If you are fortunate enough to have your mom still around, it’s really important to recognize her. But how will you celebrate Mother’s Day in a COVID-19 world?

Family Together in Bedroom

Some Things Still Haven’t Changed – Yet

Whether you’re staying at home or not (and you must social distance in order to protect yourself and everyone around you), you can still send your mom a heartfelt or funny greeting card and you can do it without ever leaving your house.

The total number of coronavirus cases in the United States has now exceeded well over one million. The American death toll, over 60,000 now (that we know of), has surpassed that of the Vietnam War…in just 2 months. But today’s post is not about the horrendous health impacts of the virus so far, but the economic impacts yet to come.

The bad news is that our economy was reported this week to have shrunk by nearly 5% in the first quarter, the worst performance since the recession of a decade ago and probably the forerunner of a much steeper collapse in the second quarter that could be the worst one since the Great Depression, 90 years ago!

But in spite of these things, the White House on Wednesday declared its response to the crisis “a great success story”.

If you can’t remember the last time you joined your family and friends for a big shindig down at your favorite local restaurant, you are not alone. I can’t either and neither can millions of other people these days. With the coming of COVID-19, restaurant dining rooms are closed and any of the ones that are open are being forced to serve take-out or delivery only. Frankly, that just isn’t the same thing to me. You do lose a little of the “flavor” (pardon the pun) carrying home a brown bag. So that makes it a real challenge to make your dining at home in any way special or fun. That raises the question: “Can it ever equal dining out and be your new normal dining out experience?”

There Are Adjustments

You have always had to prepare dinners at home, haven’t you? Sorry, if you are one of the ones who always did pick-up, delivery, or constantly dined out for reasons which I will never I understand and neither will your wallet! For now, those days are over (which may actually be forcing you to save some money), so what will you do?

As we grow up and take more and more responsibilities on in our lives, sometimes we can’t help but look back and say to ourselves, “Gee, I wish I had known or learned about that when I was younger!”

There are times I reflect on my life and wish I had known a few more things about life and even personal finance back in my youth. It certainly would have smoothed out some of those bumpy roads I experienced in life when I was first getting started out.

Many years ago the late great Steve Allen (of whom I was and still am a huge fan) made me chuckle with a one liner that went like this. When he was asked: “What sign were you born under?”, he responded: “Rooms for Rent!” So today, despite the serious issues we are facing, I thought it might be time to look at the world in a little different way.

Believe me I get it: the world is a pretty scary place right now. It doesn’t really matter where you live or what you thought life was going to be like for you and your family, it’s now different. And even worse, it’s not just different, it’s frighteningly different. Health worries are scary. And then there’s the financial scariness, too. If you had a job, will you have it again? Will your retirement plan stay afloat? What will happen to your home, and your credit? Did I leave anything out? If so, then I guess the big question is, “What is in the cards and the stars for your financial future?”

With all my free time these past few weeks, I have been mostly sitting around here thinking about the hundreds of thousands of victims around the world contracting the coronavirus. Watching the news each day is very depressing and frightening. Is there anything more we can do and are we on the way to stopping it? The questions I have and all of us have seem to be open and unresolved.

Second only to the life and death issues we face are the financial questions. Millions are now unemployed and the financial markets are crumbling around the world. So how is it possible that the U.S. government is handing out trillions of dollars to businesses and citizens? Where is all this money coming from? And even bigger of a question, how will the new national deficit ever get paid back?

I sometimes would kid my wife about our spending during a typical week; at least I used to do it before COVID-19 that is. You see, we had become really predictable in our spending habits. Because we don’t work at a “job” outside the home, we save money by staying at home. But now you are, too!

Shaped over time by careful budgeting, and concentrating an awful lot on spending on our needs and not on wants, we came in pretty much like clockwork on our budget numbers for years. The only exceptions were almost always centered on medical expenses for doctors, tests, and medicines which ebb and flow on their own course and occasionally throw the budget out of whack.

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